"Lord Ellersleigh!” Emme gasped, but she laughed in spite of herself.
He shrugged as if his ribald comments were a matter of course. “They are cold comfort to me, Miss Walter. Now who were you talking to?"
"No one, really, just a figment of my imagination I suppose.” The words rang hollow even to her own ears.
"I don't think so. I don't think it was a figment of your imagination at all. Was it Elise? Come back to torment poor Rhys even in her death?” he offered companionably.
"No, it wasn't Elise and I cannot have this conversation with you! It's impossible!"
Michael could sense her distress. “But you must have it with someone. Why not tell me? I will never repeat it because then I would have to tell the world I'd been alone with you. You'd be ruined and I'd be dead or married to you. The outcome would be poor for the both of us. So, say what you will, Miss Walters. It is safe with me."
Emme looked at him for a moment. She wanted to tell him, she realized. Or at the very least, she wanted to tell someone. “She said her name was Melisande."
Michael felt the color drain from his face. He felt as if the world had simply dropped out from beneath his feet. For all that, he remained lounging negligently against the naked goddess. “Melisande you say? What did your Melisande have to say to you?"
Emme had not missed his reaction in spite of his attempt to maintain his nonchalant facade.
"She told me a story about a princess, who married a kind man she didn't love. She said the princess was angry at him for having been forced to marry him because she loved another. But Melisande said the princess loved unwisely. Does that mean anything to you?"
It did. It meant so much that the hair at the back of his neck stood up. “What did Melisande look like? I've never seen a ghost. I find myself quite curious."
Emme shook her head. For a carefree rake there was an intensity in him that made her somewhat uneasy. “She looked like a child, like a little girl of perhaps ten. She had dark, curling hair and green eyes. I had thought at first, that she must be a relative of Lord Rhys'. You are asking very unusual questions, Lord Ellersleigh."
Michael's skin prickled. He felt as if the temperature around him had suddenly dropped. When he opened his mouth to answer, he was surprised to see his breath misting in front of him.
"Find your way to the portrait gallery, Miss Walters. On the southern end, third from the window on the eastern wall, you'll find your Melisande."
Emme rose, unable to stop herself and headed in the direction he indicated. She looked behind her but Lord Ellersleigh was still standing at the statue. In the rosebush beside him, Emme could see a pale, shadowy face. She didn't warn him, she couldn't.
Turning, she hurried to the portrait gallery, to stare at the face of a dead child with green eyes and dark hair. It was a family portrait, and the girl was seated in the grass, beside her brothers, the previous duke, Lord Jeremy, and a younger, more carefree version of Lord Rhys.
Staring at the portrait, Emme wished herself anywhere but Briarleigh, anywhere that she wouldn't have to communicate with the long dead sister of a man whose mere presence unnerved her almost as much as the spirits.
Outside, Michael straightened when she was gone. There was a charge in the air around him, a prickling sensation that he had felt only a few times before, and every time had been at Briarwood Hall. He had always dismissed it, blaming it on spirits of another kind.
"Are you here?” he asked aloud, and his voice sounded tremulous even to his own ears. Huskily, he added, “If you can hear me, I am so dreadfully sorry."
He cursed the tears that burned behind his eyes. It had been almost two decades, but the guilt still clawed at his belly, and left him weak. Without a backward glance he turned on his heel and marched back to the house. He'd spent his life burying his memories in brandy and women and had no intention of stopping.
He had watched from the shadows. He was too far away to hear what had been said, but he had seen the easy smile and the flirtation between them. His fists clenched at his sides and the rage built inside him. He knew why she was there. He knew what everyone whispered about her. None of it mattered. She was simply a slut like all the others. They always acted so uppity, as if they were better than him, as if he were somehow less. They panted after the titled lords like bitches in heat and turned their pretty noses up at him. He wanted to shout. He wanted to follow her, to track her through the house and force her to ground. He would see how haughty she was then.
The blackness that existed within him swelled, reaching out with sharp tentacles, stabbing into his guts and twisting them, until he burned with fury. She wanted them, with their fortunes and their titles, either one of them would do, Ellersleigh or the bloody duke.